109118-open-letter-to-carbine-revitalising-your-game
Content ---- ---- ---- I believe hardcore is fine, i also believe dungeon boss difficulty is fine. The problem lies in the lack of accessible content for casual, or less skilled players. The silver medal requirement was far too punishing for these players (and truth be told had nothing to do with difficulty in the first place but that's a matter of opinion). They reach level 50 and are then immediately blocked from doing most things bashing their head off a wall. That hardcore wall should come later, with enough content to appease them beforehand, not easy content, but perhaps not "HARDCORE" content in our eyes, but hardcore in theirs. Something i came to the realization of is that we (as experienced gamers) have extremely high expectations of newer (or casual) players. Ridiculously so in fact. We come from a background of competitive gaming, raiding, high-rating arenas, other games (FPS, RTS, MOBA) all at a high-level according to the majority of people and while its OK and perfectly awesome to have content aimed at us, there are 20 other people who will fall short barely within sight of the line. Yes we should get our hardcore content are entitled to it. But they are also just as entitled to challenging content they can achieve too. If they get that and start complaining the hardcore content is too hard? Tough shit. Like i said, shape up or ship out. Simply having hardcore content for the 1% and nothing for the rest wont cut it, you have to give a little even if focusing elsewhere. WoW (and unfortunately every other MMO) went in the direction of "HERE YOU GO CASUALS, WE GIVE YOU ALL CONTENT FOR CASUAL!" and Wildstar went in the completely opposite direction of "GTFO casual scum". Neither is the right approach or even a remotely good one. | |} ---- Pretty much at this point they are fighting to keep the people they have remaining because everyone who was going to leave left and its very obvious. imo they need to increase the response time to glaring exploits and bugs that ruin the fun of the game. Their customer support is also the worst i've ever seen, like can somebody post a case where they were ever helped and not linked to a thread or given a typical response saying we know its a problem but we cannot do anything so get *cupcake*ed? | |} ---- ---- Look I don't want this thread becoming about my post so I won't type a long drawn out response. The bottomline is this: If I identified as casual, I wouldn't play WildStar. I can simply do more in other games with that identity. I even have access to Raids(not just LFR I know people were going to say that lol) Normal Mode Entry Level Raids. Pretty much every MMORPG has these. In this game a few Hardcore Players burnt out in the 1st Raid. Not a good look from a Casual Standpoint(I personally identify as semi-hardcore, just before the patch or just after the patch ;) ). *last response* | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- | |} ---- Mixed feelings about this one. In order: 1. I don't think people will play more if their servers are merged. Just, pointblank, that's not going to fix things. It's a hot complaint, just as server queues were in the beginning, but people aren't leaving because their servers are empty, they're leaving because they don't know how to find people. You'd be amazed how many people don't know how to find and join a circle for content their guild doesn't do well enough. With that said, it doesn't necessarily affect me (I'm on Evindra), so I would personally recommend that Carbine just offer free transfers FROM a couple servers for a day or two every month for population rebalancing if they need a quick fix. That way, people who think it's really a problem can get off their server without costing any money. I mean, a lot of those people will get there and have the same issues, most likely, but it might work and it would be especially helpful for the PVP servers. Mergers are just too hard to pull off with the populations they still have, considering their issue is that there are still too many active accounts to merge servers. At least it gives people who don't like their own servers a chance, every month, to transfer off the lowest pop servers to the higher ones. Maybe then they can merge some servers more easily. 2. I think you're talking about zone sharding here, and if that's an issue, yes, fix it. It wouldn't surprise me if the sharding was increased at launch and can now be tuned down. As I said, though, "empty" servers, I don't think, are actually a problem. A complaint about an "empty" Illium, when it's fairly obvious that the population lives on housing plots in Wildstar, is catering to a system in other MMORPGs where a central city is a thriving hub where everybody lives. In Wildstar, you can port directly to your house, and visit town once a day to do business, then leave. If you want to fill the inner cities again, you'd have to put a lot more there that people want to do and interact with (as my own town of Columbus if finding out). That might take longer, but would maybe "feel" more full since people would have a reason to be in town. Until then, though, Wildstar is a very suburban game, where you drop by the CX once every few days. 3. I'll respond more to this... I agree with a lot of this, save a few points. There is content for fewer and more casual players. However, people don't want to be fewer or more casual. Wildstar is a game that has things to do if you can't raid or even clear a vet dungeon, but everyone on these forums wants to raid and do vet dungeons. What this is supposed to do is convince players to practice, join social circles, read guides, find mentors, and get better. The last decade or so of MMORPGs have taught people that "You can't do it, go play with pets." People are self-defeating. I'm all for adding more content, even for casuals who defeat themselves, but I actually applaud Wildstar for not putting in the "kiddie pool" for people who want to see the content and get their carrots without learning to be better. It's led to a generation of people who are okay at not being good enough, rather than wanting to get better. People who say, "Well, I can't raid when I can only play 3 hours a day 3 days a week." It's depressing, really, how people have come to view difficulty as an impenetrable wall because they can't just walk through it or see beyond it, so they sit down, content to live on their side. 4. It's nice if bugs and QOL improvements are implemented quickly and effectively. They will never be done fast enough for the playerbase. The rate Carbine, for a small subdivision of a company, can put these out is really staggering for people who've ever had to troubleshoot, but it's not ever going to be good enough to silence everyone. If Blizzard is still having to deal with people talking about bugs (and they are), trust me, Carbine will never escape the criticism there. Blizzard is one of the hands-down most reliable developers on the planet, and even they can't make a patch for a ten year old game deemed bug free enough not to conjure up some people sneering at the "buggy mess". Software development is a highly underappreciated profession. 5. PVP botting is the same as WoW. They'll win some battles, lose others. There's only so much they can do since PVP bots, in fact bots in general, are meant to mimic the actions of actual players. So you have to script automatic protections that don't kick legit players out for accidentally doing something bot-like. It sounds easier than it is. On the other hand, the tanked ratings do seem to be a problem. Carbine has a solution, but honestly they may just want to scale PVP according to gearscores rather than rating. It's hard to 'fix' PVP, since it automatically scales difficulty. Half the people are winning and don't complain, half aren't and may complain. Hell, EVE has been going strong for a decade despite having an absolutely attrocious UI for PVP and being based on it, solely because it will automatically scale its difficulty curve. There are universal improvements, though I don't see Carbine being able to suddenly make PVP complaint-free. Nothing is. 6. On board with this point 100%. I started playing because I got a beta access key. I wasn't even planning on playing this game (I was really hyped for WoD and was grinding through FFXIV:ARR when I shrugged and jumped into the beta on a whim). The fact remains that almost everyone who has played this game loves this game; they leave because they get to the endgame without social connections and get lost because the only other thing they can see that has linear progression is raid attunement. Raid attunement doesn't favor solo play well in the later stages. Free trials may infuse us with a few more people more amenable to group play. It certainly doesn't hurt to have new people in the game. I'd even say to make the trial 14 day or make the first 15-20 levels with limited social functions (so we don't get goldspammed). Let people play; the gameplay speaks for itself. | |} ---- Who says players have to get Silver on their fresh 50's immediately? People could, you know, aim to just clear the dungeon initially. Once they cleared, then aim to get bronze. Once they get bronze, then aim to get silver. Once they get silver, then aim to get gold. (-thank you SlyJeff-) But nuh uh, ain't nobody got time for that. Must jump to silver now now now! /mondo That impatient attitude aside, no doubt you've seen a lot of people saying the difference between vet adventures and vet dungeons is night & day - the jump in difficulty is too much. Maybe Carbine could have design some in-between instances for the "afternoons", to bridge the nights and the days. But who knows? Maybe people will still claim ain't nobody got time for that. | |} ---- And I agree with them. They should NOT nerf dungeons or raids. However, what they should do is make raids more accessible. And by that I mean shorten the attunement quests, remove the requirement for rep and the requirement to buy stuff for elder gems. Keep the world bosses requirements and the dungeon medal requirements, I can get behind that. Lower the amount of people needed for a raid, 40 is too old fashioned. 25 man can still be made hardcore for that amount of people and it is more accessible Other than that, dungeons are a lot of fun, even adventures can be a lot of fun. I have not tried raids and probably won't either because I also have a fair interest in roleplay and is thus on a roleplay server, guess how much of a chance I have to find a raiding guild here, especially with a declining population, harh. | |} ---- ---- Look, if we're talking that, I think they should either offer free transfers or go to three megaservers per region, PVE, PVP, and RP. If they're going to put the work into server merges, why not just go all out and get rid of the server problem for good? I doubt it would take much longer, since merging servers is a fairly involved process. | |} ---- ---- ---- Circles, man, circles are the answer. Join a PVE circle. You don't have to leave your guild and you can get a pool of semi-reliable people that aren't one-and-done PUG members. I swear, the most underutilized function in all of Wildstar. At first, I didn't even know what they were. Now I run around guildless on Evindra and I don't even notice. | |} ---- lol@'quality' | |} ---- I know I said last response but it was really hard to not touch that lol. What he said is EXACTLY what people thought when WoW dropped Raid size from 40 to 25. | |} ---- ---- I mean, there is plenty of content for casuals; it's just many individuals don't appreciate it Adventures, dungeons (non- Vet + vet), Shiphands, expeditions, challenges, PvP, housing, crafting, world bosses, BH events (tree / Elyona / scorch), etc etc etc. Much more casual content than any other just -post release MMO I can recall | |} ---- Plenty but they're not rewarding. -Shiphands = Low level content, no reward, not counted -Adventures = RNG drops, And all drops worse than 5min crafting so why farm? -Expeditions/Challenges = That's for perfectionist not casual. It's too small time frame for each event to being call content for casual -PvP? Lol. It's complete broken and unreward. If they still havent seperate 1800rating gear ppl off from the public, then say good bye to the balance. -World bosses? = No one give a crap apart from attument required because it drop shit, and basicly no reward See the key thing here? "No enough reward". Meaning not enough candies for casuals. 90% of populations are casual, the rest 10% is skilled/hardcore. If the game has nothing to offer for casual, the decline will be hard like Wildstar. Dropping from High to Medium to Low in a month timeframe is not easy feat to happen. It's just you "dont have" the content for them (and/or "the content not rewarding"). Bottom line: -Fix your shit itemization. Buff more epic drop less RNG. Do you know that this game has 2x more loot table than others because each class/role has their own specific piece of gear and no sharing? No point add more RNG by nerfed the drop, fix it! Make it so that there is a sense of rewardings. -Offer people "Free transfer period", make them do the work to cluster themselves in some servers. Give them helping hand. You dont have to merge server right now, just offer us free transfer to move our butts. -Fix your attument shit especially worldboss. (Like you already said but it's been almost a week yet remain no patch) -Offer people "Free week no subscription". This is the only way to bring back the surge. You better tidy your home first before attempting this because it might be the only chance that this "Free week/free transfer" works. | |} ---- Well it doesn't look like it is enough for majority of the casual and PvP is pointless due to the rating system. | |} ---- ---- ---- I couple of days ago I was a complete tool and formatted my phone, without removing my authenticator first. So I was logged out of the game. I could log onto the website, but that was that. Submitted a ticket explaining the dumb shit I had done. 20 minutes later the ticket got bumped up, and half an hour after having sent my ticket a helpful support guy had checked that my IP was my #1 trusted WildStar IP and removed the old and "broken" authenticator on it. I was well pleased. Maybe it was because my ticket was worded in a friendly and open-armed kind of way, and not some hate spewing teen angst bullocks. I don't know. I do have this faint idea though that most tickets are people raging, when in fact what they want to do is reach out for help. | |} ---- ---- You must be joking to say "Shiphand" is rewarding... All your post saying "will...will....will". Craft gears are mostly overwhelming BIS at the rate that you might never get any upgrade at all in adventure/dungeon/raid because most of the stat itemizations are shit and rune slots are freaking RNG that you better do 5min crafting RNG with tons of items than doing 1hr adventure/dungeon RNG with 1-2 item. The sense of progression in Wildstar is basicly BROKEN on both PvE and PvP. And oh PvP, you argue? Try rated arena, rated BG and let us know how you manage to get 1800 rating without any 1800 geared helpers. It's freaking broken at the moment even practice mode can be filled with those nasty OP geared people. Everything or almost i mentioned "was acknowledged" by Devs. But it is "Will", and it still not there yet. I'm talking about "The reason" why people got feded up and "already" left the game not talking about Devs being acknowledged or not. | |} ----